Dan Waber: A Depiction of a Broken AllegoryAC [Chapel] presents Dan Waber’s latest series of visual poems created by taking detailed rubbings from memorial plates on-site at local churches around Northeastern Pennsylvania. Entitled A Depiction of a Broken Allegory, these works grew out of a convergence of several ongoing areas of investigation with the primary motivation serving as an attempt to come to grips, both literally and metaphorically, with the way American culture uses language to intermix concepts of memorialization with those surrounding religion and politics.

Each rubbing was made in situ, using lumber crayons on paper—a set of tools whose rich potential Waber learned through the work of, and in correspondence with, visual poet David-Baptiste Chirot. Moreover, each individual piece limits itself to the language found on a single monument, though some monuments themselves yielded multiple pieces.

The artist’s hope is that the pieces operate on such a universal level that those who view them will, from that day forward, regardless of ideological agreement or disagreement, find themselves automatically locating the “anti-language” contained within the language of monuments.

Dan Waber is a visual poet, concrete poet, sound poet, performance poet, publisher, editor, playwright and multimedia artist whose work has appeared in a kaleidoscope of places, from digital to print, from stage to classroom, from mailboxes to puppet theaters, from Harvard to Smith. His expansive artistic range has currently led him to working, as he states, “on and everywhere in-between.” More information about Waber’s work and projects can be found at www.logolalia.com.

About AC [Institute Direct Chapel]AC’s mission is to advance the understanding of art through investigation, research and education. It is a lab and forum for experimentation and critical discussion.

We support and develop projects that explore a performative exchange across visual, verbal and experiential disciplines. We encourage critical writing that challenges conventional expectations of meaning and objectivity as well as the boundaries between the rational and subjective.

Holly Crawford is cross media artist, behavioral scientist, economist and art historian. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Essex in Art History and Theory, B.A and M.A. in Economics and M.S. in Behavioral Science from UCLA. From 2004-2006, she was a non-clinical Fellow at NYU Medical School Psychoanalytic Center. Her art and poetry (www.art-poetry.info) give new meanings and draws categories themselves into question through transformative juxtapositions. Her projects include: Offerings (Ars Electronica, (.net Participant); Open Adoption, The Road, Hyphens, Voice Over, Found Punctuation (video) Tate Modern 2007, My I have your autograph? (unofficial, Basel Miami Art Fair 2007), Critical Conversations in a Limo, NY 2006 (VIP project, Armory), 2007 in Melbourne (MIAF) & San Francisco (The LAB & Sesnon Gallery UCSC), Sound Art Limo, NY and Melbourne 2007, Flatland Limo, NYC 2008. Many projects are ongoing, site specific and participatory. Publications: Artistic Bedfellows, ed., 2008, Attached to the Mouse, 2006 and catalogue essay, “Disney and Pop” in Once Upon a Time Walt Disney Studio; Artistic Bedfellows, edited, 2008. Some projects are created and curated through AC (Art Currents) which she created and directs, www.artcurrents.org She taught art at UCLA and SVA. She was born in California and now lives in New York City.